Huguenot Immigrants and the Formation of National IDENTITIES, 1548–1787

Abstract

This article addresses the extent to which Protestant states in Europe and North America depicted the French Protestants who had found refuge in these states, as having contributed to the process of nation building and the formation of national identity. It is shown that the arrival of Huguenots was portrayed positively as the historians of these nations could contend that Huguenots had been absorbed readily into the host society because their virtues of frugality and industry corresponded admirably with the ethic of their hosts. The article demonstrates that, in no case, did this depiction correspond with reality. It shows that within those countries of refuge, Huguenots fostered a distinctive French Protestant identity that enabled them to remain aloof from the culture of their host society. In all cases Huguenots asserted themselves as a self-confident minority, convinced of the superiority of their language and culture who believed themselves to be privileged in this world as in the next. When national histories came to be composed, this dimension to the Huguenot minorities came to be expunged from historical memory as was also the fact that the Huguenots were but one of several minorities whose distinctiveness had contributed largely to the shaping of the state, culture, and society of the emerging nation-states.